FBI Director Chris Wray threatened to resign as US Attorney General Jeff Sessions called on him to fire his outgoing deputy, Axios reported on Monday.
Andrew McCabe has come under public criticism by President Donald Trump and his allies in recent weeks over the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and his connections to anti-Trump messages sent between two FBI employees during the campaign, CNN reported.
The Axios report, based on three unnamed sources, said Sessions was pressuring Wray to fire McCabe, and that one source familiar with the situation said Sessions conveyed to White House counsel Don McGahn how upset Wray was about the request, and that McGahn in turn said it wasn’t worth losing Wray over.
Trump has publicly called on McCabe to step down and tweeted repeated attacks on the FBI official.
In one December tweet, Trump said, “FBI Deputy Director McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!”
McCabe took on heightened scrutiny and criticism as news surfaced early last month that FBI agent Peter Strzok had been removed over the summer from the special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller after Mueller learned of anti-Trump messages Strzok had exchanged during the campaign with Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer who also was assigned to the Mueller investigation.
In an August 2016 message, Strzok made an apparent reference to a discussion in McCabe’s office.
A new cache of messages between Strzok and Page were delivered to Congress last Friday, according to Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. The senator asked in a letter on Saturday if the FBI has any records of messages exchanged from December 14, 2016, to May 17, 2017, which the Justice Department said were not preserved due to a technical glitch.
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